The Hunger Games and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney do NOT belong to me. Title is subject to change.

Maddy.

"Maddy," Mother says, "your client will be coming tomorrow. She's a widow, by the name of Annie Odair. She wants you to contact her dead husband, Finnick Odair. I expect you to be kind to Mrs. Odair; she is quite…"—Mother struggles to find the right word—"fragile."

I nod. "Okay," I reply slowly. This session will go well, I tell myself. It will not fail, not like the channeling session of great-great-great grandmother Maya. That story is kind of like a legend now. Mystic Maya accused of murdering a man while performing of a channeling… unforgivable. "Does she have a picture of her husband?" I ask. I need to know how he looks like for the channeling to work.

"Yes," Mother answers. She reaches into a pocket of her dress and brings out the picture. She hands it to me. "Take good care of it, Madeleine. It is of utmost importance to your client." I study the picture, or rather, the man inside the picture. Finnick Odair.

He's quite handsome, I must admit. In the picture, he looks to be about twenty-three or twenty-four, with messy bronze hair and sea-green eyes that look like they have seen too much. And his smile… it's certainly charming, as well as carefree. I decide to give him a nine-point-five on the handsome scale.

I look up. While I was busy looking at Mr. Odair, Mother had left. Oh, well. She probably had to attend to the trainees. Oh, wait. That's right. I need to train, too. I can't perform the channeling with weak powers. I'll disappoint my client. Now wouldn't that be unforgivable. I slip the picture into my pocket and head to training.

"Mystic Maddy, is it true that…"—my cousin lowers her voice—"you're going to perform a channeling tomorrow? For Annie Odair?"

I sigh. Wow, news is spreading fast. Well, the fact that it's already reached Matilda isn't surprising. No one ever got to perform a channeling at my age—fifteen. The youngest would be Mystic Maya herself, at eighteen. And see how well that turned out? It's a good thing Phoenix Wright was there to defend her! "Why, Matilda, you know Annie Odair?" I hiss back.

I'm not surprised when Matilda whispers, "Yes." She is such a big gossip. "Don't you ever read?" I do. "Well, Annie Odair was in this thing called the Hunger Games, where children fight to the death. The last one standing wins. And Annie won. But after seeing her partner beheaded, she went crazy."

"Really," I say. "And what happened after that?"

"She fell in love with this guy called Finnick Odair," Matilda continues. "Finnick was in the Hunger Games, too. That was when people started to rebel. So, yeah… the rebellion started. But before Finnick went off to war, he married Annie. It's a shame he died, right when he was about to be a father!"

"Really!" I say. "That's too bad. Anyway, where'd you learn all this?"

"I went out to the city two days ago, and bought a book about it," Matilda replies simply.

"Okay." I say, my thoughts flashing back to the picture of Finnick Odair. I say goodbye to Matilda, and head back to my room. That's when her story really begins to sink in, and when my argument with myself begins.

My client's crazy. My client, Annie Odair, is crazy.

No, that was years ago; she might not be crazy now.

Still, you never know.